Snowden case exposes Big Brother,' big data'

It’s one thing to blow the whistle on government injustice, real or perceived. It’s quite another to expose your nation’s secret programs that have been designed to gather vital information about the activities of foreign powers. The latter reasonably could be called treason.

That’s what the U.S. government has decided is the case with Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contract employee whose disclosure of its intelligence-gathering activities has caused an international furor. The Justice Department has indicted Snowden and, if one looks at the matter closely, it had little choice. The minute this self-styled defender of our right to privacy talked with China about our spying, he changed the nature of his actions. Even those unschooled in such matters could conclude that without much strain.

While counterintelligence activities against real or supposed enemies are no secret, making them public has huge ramifications. The Chinese undoubtedly are not surprised that we are listening in, no more than we are about their efforts to do likewise. But revealing the activities gives them leverage in this country’s bilateral diplomatic efforts to resolve a number of issues — including those to keep them from improving their military weaponry at our expense.

The Obama administration’s aggressive efforts to stop leaks through intimidation of the press and prosecution of leakers have been increasingly criticized, as they should have been in most cases. Leaks are the life blood of this burg. Trying to stick one’s finger in the dike to stop them shows a complete lack of understanding about the city’s culture. The president and his staff at times have displayed a callous disregard of First Amendment protections.

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The charges against Snowden, however, seem to be fairly filed despite the difficult legal hurdles to bringing him back to this country. He now reportedly wants asylum in Ecuador, having left Hong Kong. The very fact he is fleeing belies his claim that his only motivation was righteous indignation over his government’s eavesdropping on his fellow citizens. I am not suggesting that he is in the pay of some outside source, although any efforts by a foreign government to delay his extradition could be considered compensation of a sort.

One of the problems to be sorted out is how the Justice Department and the White House react to the press involvement in this matter.

The British newspaper Guardian and The Washington Post were original beneficiaries of Snowden’s tattling. There seems to be little chance that government authorities here or in Britain would want to muddy the water with the controversy generated by taking on the entire press establishment. The Nixon administration certainly found that out when it tried to restrain the printing of the so-called Pentagon Papers about U.S. indiscretions in Vietnam, leaked to key newspapers by Daniel Ellsworth.

An outraged press rose up and the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously smacked down the White House, dismissing so called “prior restraint” as clearly unconstitutional.

Where does the current leaks case go from here? There seems a good chance that, aside from Snowden, enough members of Congress are disturbed by the implications of “Big Brother” in the domestic side of this affair to keep the matter from disappearing.

A wide audience supports contentions that the NSA has overstepped at least the intent of post-9/11 laws that authorized sweeping collections of Americans’ private and business communications, even though these activities were approved by a special court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The court itself, so secret most Americans don’t know it exists, has been opened to some very rare sunlight. It almost never turns down a government request, which can be attributed to the fact that the government’s voice is the only one the court hears.

Most disturbing in all this is the concept of interception that allows the NSA to receive vast blocks of information rather than on a case-by-case basis. If nothing else, it has started a lot of Americans thinking about how far we should be going.